Day 13: June 10, 2009

We have had a lot of late nights at the Owen School of Management recently, and tonight was no different. However, in spite of the extremely busy schedule that is challenging our students, they all were on-time to breakfast at 7:00 am this morning and met their new teams. We launched Sony at 10 am and wanted to give our participants an hour to get to know and adjust to their new team dynamics.

Team 1: Kyle Clay (Coach), Stephanos Stroop, David Jogwe, Erin Steigerwald, Ryan Stutler, John Zic, Mallory Mahan, Alli Thompson, Anna Laptook

Team 2: Dave Thomas (Coach), Patrick Widen, Alex Dowd, Melinda Moyo, Fred Tang, Tyler Hagen, Adair Meaden, Grayson Sharpe, Vince Nord

Team 3: Eric Bilbrey (Coach), Meaghan Rymer, Jens von der Linden, Mark Shessesr, Ryan Foley, Lily Chen, Mary Lindley Carswell, Danielle Levy

Team 4: LaDonna Thornton (Coach), Will Parker Roe, Stacie Pawlicki, Jamie Kaplan, Nick Cromydas, Rachel Sullivan, Scott Greer, George Boghos, Abigail Stavrand

Team 5: Erin Anderson (Coach), Fark Tari, Donny McCunniff, Geoff Miller, Mary Beth Gribble, Ingram Carpenter, Lyle Holmes, Andrew Lossing, Steph Milne

Team 6: Jeff Freude (Coach) Eppa Rixey, Priscilla Arellano, Austin Campbell, Courtney LeBow, Stephanie Coe, Westley Taylor, Hewsan Pang, Joseph Wu

Team 7: Akadius Berry (Coach), Kate Grumbles, Christina Chen. Jennifer Duty, Raul Perez-Gurdian, Alexandra Brown, Adrian Rossi-Mastracci, Kaity Morris, Charlie Boyd

Team 8: Macee Bumpus (Coach), Riley Strong, Cat Wearn, Chris Cooper, Nicole Quinn, Olivia Cotton, Tommy Crespo, Rick Hayer, Charles Welch

Before launching Sony, our participants had their last session with Professor Steve Hoeffler, and then we were off to the Musician’s Hall of Fame to launch what will be an amazing project! During the launch, our young men and women learned about the current state of the music industry as a whole as well as specific constraints faced by country music. After providing our students with a strong foundation, they challenged them to develop a new business model to dress the significant decrease in profits the music industry.

We left the Musician’s Hall of Fame; we split our program into two groups. Teams 1 – 4 attended a studio with Paul Frankenberg. Mr. Frankenberg talked to our students about their resumes and how to conduct themselves in an interview – specifically how to prepare, read the interviewer, and obtain a strong feeling about job / program through the interview. During this time, teams 5 – 8 worked with Communications professor on how to prepare answers to commonly asked questions during interviews and how to portray themselves in the best possible light during interviews. Teams 1 – 4 and teams 5 – 8 will switch and meet with either Mr. Frankenberg or Professor English later in the program; however, the next hour and a half was devoted to beginning the research process for the Sony project.

We quickly broke for a working dinner and then the rest of the evening was dedicated to finishing the Nashville Chamber of Commerce project. Teams finalized their storyboards, bibliographies, handouts and presentations and in an effort to make their projects perfect we did not end up closing down the building until 1 am! Tomorrow is going to be another busy day at Accelerator, with a special surprise for our students surrounding the Sony project. Tune in tomorrow to read all about it!

If you want to see our photo library, you may do so at: http://picasaweb.google.com/VanderbiltAccelerator

Michael Burcham
Faculty Director, Accelerator 2009